What's it like to be Ed Bennett?
A short, informal question and answer interview with Ed Bennett.
1. How and when did you get interested in composing?
I always wrote things from my early teens I suppose but never thought much of it.
2. Is composing your 'day job' or do you do something else as well?
At the moment composing is what I do most of the time. I try to teach composition one day a week as well.
3. Where do you mostly get your ideas?
Now from the students that I teach but also from general everyday experiences.
4. What are you working on at the moment?
A piece for cello, celeste, actor and electronics for the London Sinfonietta.
5. Describe your typical working day.
Completely unromantic. Get up early, work hard (if you can call it work). Later, question why on earth I'm doing this and then remember that I used to stack shelves in Crazy Prices [Supermarket chain in Northern Ireland in the 1980s].
6. What is it like hearing a new piece played for the first time?
Exciting, but normally after I've heard it once I'm bored with it.
7. What has been the highlight of your career so far?
Career? Getting to meet lots of fantastic musicians and working with ones who don't treat it as a day job.
8. What has been the lowlight of your career so far?
Stacking shelves at Crazy Prices (although the pay was more reliable).
9. What is your greatest ambition?
To enjoy what I do even more.
10. Which musician in history do you most admire and why?
Of course there are too many.
11. Which present-day musician do you most admire and why?
There isn't one that I most admire -- there are many.
12. Which period of history would you most like to have lived in and why?
Now. I can't imagine living in another time.
13. What is the best thing about being a composer?
Making things.
14. What is the worst thing about being a composer?
Making things that don't work.
15. If you weren't a composer, what other career might you have chosen?
Stacking shelves at Crazy Prices (I wanted to be a visual artist, that's how I ended up in Crazy Prices).
16. What is your concept of heaven?
No Government treating us all like morons.
17. What is your concept of hell?
Having to meet the lunatics who rule the world at the moment (maybe I'm in Hell).
18. What is your favourite food?
Too many to mention.
19. If someone gave you three months off with unlimited travel and living expenses, what would you do?
Write music somewhere nice.
20. If you could have one thing in the world that would really help you as a composer, what would it be?
More ideas.